“Now! Now!” he called, knowing the Dragon that was Cassandra would hear him, would understand.
She turned her delicate muzzle toward him, and Max saw himself reflected in her gray eyes. Saw that she knew him, that it was Cassandra, truly the Sword of Truth that he knew and loved. His heart swelled until he thought it would explode.
“Now!” he yelled again, as the Basilisk struggled in his grasp. He saw the Dragon take breath and closed his eyes against the blast as the Basilisk writhed, screaming, in his arms, and suddenly what Max held was not the Rider, but the true Basilisk, its red eyes blazing, desperately struggling to free itself from the searing bite of the fire, its wings beating him about the head, its clawed feet raking at Max’s heart. But Max gritted his teeth and hung on, keeping the Beast in the heart of the dragonfire, the dra’aj fire that enveloped them. Max braced himself against the blast, determined not to flinch at this final moment as Cassandra breathed, and her flames washed him, pure dra’aj, not consuming, but filling him completely with heat and light and sweetness, and still she breathed, until he thought he might empty her, her flames burning clean until he himself was shedding light and fire; until he himself ignited, the Phoenix in his nest of fire, the Fire Bird rising from his death, and Max found that the Phoenix, too, had claws, and he added his freshly fed fires to those filling the Basilisk, and the stone-eyed beast filled with fire, swelled with heat, and exploded outward, over him, through him, the blast deafening him, stunning all his senses until Max knew that it was too much, that even his Phoenix self could not hope to contain the fires, the dra’aj now set free.
But even as he felt himself on the brink of melting with the force of dra’aj pouring through him, the blaze found his link to the Talismans and flowed through it, the flames singing and crackling in triumph as they fed through him to the Talismans and they, too, caught fire, absorbing, awakening.
“Dreamer of Time,” the Talismans said through Max’s lips, “Are you not content? Do you not now feel the Truth?”
The Basilisk’s face relaxed; for a moment Max saw the real Dreamer of Time once more, and the Phoenix in him rejoiced. Max released him, taking a step away, ready to welcome his friend.
“. . . . .” the Basilisk said, his lips curving in a smile. He lunged for Max’s throat, the skin on his cock’s head morphing from feathers to scales to tiny snakes.
Max fell back under the Basilisk Prince’s weight, pulling the Rider off balance. Without thinking, his body remembered what Cassandra had painstakingly taught him over the centuries. He brought up his feet as he fell back, catching the Basilisk Prince in the stomach, and straightened his legs until he catapulted the Basilisk, morphed now to a lumpy griffin, over his head.
And over the edge of the Stone. They had been closer to the precipice than Max had thought.
And he was once more kneeling on the Stone, the Talismans bright and alive behind him, the Basilisk gone, tumbling his eternal changes through the bottomless sky.
Max saw the Dragon, wings aloft, blazing in triumph, delicately touch its silver claws down on the Stone near him.
The Stone sounded.
Chapter Twenty-one
THE LIGHT NEVER CHANGED on Ma’at, the Stone of Virtue. It was still midday, and the only shadow cast was that under the ash tree rooted in the center of the Stone where there had never been plant or tree before. Still, a part of Max knew that it wasn’t just hours, but a whole Cycle that was passing as they bore witness. Some of the Riders grouped under the tree were wearing purple but looked as if they no longer quite remembered why. The others wore the dusty, well-worn leathers of Wild Riders, with here and there a gra’if helm or sword catching the light with its peculiar silver gleam. The Ogre Thunder Under the Mountain had been unconscious, not dead, and now sat near them, leaning her cheek against the bark of the ash tree that was part of her fara’ip.
Max was dimly aware of Lightborn’s hand on his shoulder, as he was dimly aware of the hard rock under his knees, but the full force of his attention was focused on the High Prince.
The High Prince of the People had shed her Guidebeast’s form and sat in her gra’if shirt and a pair of worn leather breeches borrowed from one of the dead, cradling in her arms an old Wild Rider who was not quite dead.
“Can you free Trere’if?” Blood on the Snow was whispering, his voice a faint thread, but clearly audible in that cool silence that once more prevailed on the Stone.
“I can,” the Prince said in her dark chocolate voice, “but let me first—”
The old Rider placed trembling fingers on her lips. “Your Healing is not for me, my lord Prince,” he said. “Your Healing is for the Lands. Make them True again, my Prince,” his hand fluttered upward toward the branches above them, “free Trere’if. I am the last of my kind, the last to have seen the High Prince of old. It is my time to die, and this is a good place. I have reached the end of my journey; with me the Cycle turns.”
The High Prince raised her eyes from the old Rider’s face to look at Max, her eyebrows slightly lifted. Max nodded, while his heart tore.
“My son.” Blood turned, his profile sharply etched against Cassandra’s gra’if. Max took his father’s hand.
“Father,” he stopped and cleared his throat, forced a smile to his lips. “When did you know?”
Blood smiled, his lips pale against his bone-white skin. “I only guessed,” he said, touching the tip of his finger to the Phoenix torque Max had restored to Cassandra’s neck. “When I saw this. They were wed, the High Prince and the Guardian, in my time. I thought—I hoped, it might be so.”
Max nodded. Now he knew why his father had not stopped him from going after Cassandra, had almost encouraged him to bring them all here, to the Stone. To give the Talismans a chance to Test her.
“Why did the Stone not Sound when she arrived?”
Max did not even glance up at Lightborn’s question; he already knew the answer. He had known it as soon as the Stone did Sound.
“There was the Testing,” he said. “She didn’t leave when she could have, she came back for us, emptied herself of dra’aj to fight the Basilisk, to fill the Talismans.” He looked up. “And to save me.”
“The Heart of the People,” Lightborn said, his soft voice husky and full.
Max nodded, his eyes once more on his father’s face.
“Your Dragonborn Prince is very beautiful,” the old Rider whispered. “A pity I will not see your children.”
Max shut his eyes, clamped his teeth against the words that pushed against his lips. He felt it as Blood on the Snow Faded, his dra’aj passing through Cassandra, the High Prince, and Max himself, to the Talismans, and from them to the Lands. As it should be. As it had not been for many turns of Sun, Moon, and Stars.
He was standing, and Cassandra had her arms around him, and his face was buried in her saffron-scented hair, and her lips felt cool against his neck.
“My Prince.”
They both looked up at the soft whisper, though Max knew that there was only one person who could be addressed that way when the High Prince was present.
“Here is another who is dying.” The Moonward Rider who had been helping them came forward, with a red-draped body in his arms.
“Oh, god,” Cassandra said, stepping toward them with her hands raised. “Moon?”
Cassandra gathered the girl into her own arms, knelt and bowed her head, laying her cheek against the blood drying on Moon’s.
Max touched the Moonward Rider on the arm, drawing him away from the site of Healing. The first Healing of the new Cycle.
The Sun had turned three times when the High Prince and the Guardian rode their Cloud Horses through the Pass of Welu’un to where it opened into the Vale of Trere’if. The Vale was full of the Wood once more, all traces of the Basilisk’s Citadel gone with the turning of the Cycle and the coming of the High Prince. The wind blew from the Vale, bringing with it the dark earth forest smells, the small sounds of life and death in the wild Wood. Be
hind them the Pass was full of brightly colored tents, dominated by the black, red, and silver pavilions that were the court of the High Prince.
Cassandra liked to make sure that they rode alone together for some part of every day. For one thing, it was a way for them to be just Max and Cassandra again. They pulled up, their Cloud Horses dancing, as they came upon Moon sitting on a boulder, looking out over Trere’if, her arms circling her drawn-up knees. The Moonward Rider, Stormwolf, was nearby, looking at a flower he’d picked out of the grass, brows furrowed, but a small smile on his lips.
Moon turned and stood when she heard the horses, a smile blooming on her own face. She and Stormwolf were the only two Riders who wore Cassandra’s colors, and both were very proud of that.
“I have been trying to remember exactly why I hated you so much,” she said to Max, “but,” she shrugged, “it feels like it was someone else.”
“Glad to hear it,” Max said, smiling. “Do you know that Honor of Souls is looking for you?”
“I’m safe here, and besides, Stormwolf is with me.”
“And Honor of Souls looks for him as well,” Cassandra said.
Stormwolf, who had once been a Hound and who—like Moon—was learning to be just a Rider again, had turned at the sound of his name and came wading through the waist-high grass, still holding the little blue flower.
“Are we wanted, my Prince?” His voice had become less harsh, and he now spoke routinely above a whisper, but his past still cast shadows in his gray eyes.
Cassandra watched them walking slowly back toward the pavilions with a smile. It was one of her better ideas, she thought, to give her sister and the ex-Hound the task of watching out for each other, and to have Honor of Souls look after them both.
“The Wild Riders are having the last laugh,” Max said, when they had urged their Horses forward into Trere’if.
“How so?” Cassandra turned to smile at him, bringing her thoughts from her sister back to the Lands.
“With so much of the Basilisk Prince’s work undone by the Talismans,” Max said, nodding at the Vale before them, “many of us are wanderers and travelers again. Restoring harmony among us all may be your biggest challenge.”
“I’ve got a feeling that’s going to be the least of my problems,” she said, frowning.
“Really?” Max shifted in his saddle to face her completely. “So what do you think the challenge of this new Cycle will be?”
Cassandra smiled, looking back at Trere’if again.
“The Shadowlands.”
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PARNO LIONSMANE RESTED his elbows on the ship’s rail and watched as his Partner, Dhu-lyn Wolfshead, led her mare Bloodbone from the deck of the Catseye down the ramp to the pier. The spotted mare was snorting just a bit, and putting her feet down delicately, but Dhulyn kept her moving with soft murmurings and a steady pressure on the bridle. The Catseye was a small coastal trading ship, wide and low in the water, and the horses had spent the four-day trip from the Isle of Cabrea secure in an enclosed horse-box on deck, but there were few horses who traveled happily by sea. Dhulyn had taken Warhammer, Parno’s big gray gelding, down the ramp first, claiming that Bloodbone would be ashamed to be more frightened than his gelding, and would come the more quietly for the bigger horse’s example. Parno believed her. He believed any and everything that Dhulyn told him about horses.
“Good trip then, mercenary?” Captain Huelra left off directing his sailors and joined Parno at the rail.
“Calm and quiet, thank you, captain, just how we like it.” Parno hunched his shoulders against the chill breeze that was blowing off the water. The harbor at Navra was sheltered—the salt flats which made the town important were off to the east—making it the best place to dock this early in the year, when most travelers were still waiting out the last of the winter storms.
“Don’t usually like horses onboard,” captain Huelra was saying, “but your Brother is a good hand with them. It is natural to her, eh? Being an Outlander and all?”
Parno looked to where Dhulyn stood with the horses, bloodred hair dull under the cloudy sky, rubbing their faces and caressing their ears while they became accustomed once again to the feel of land underneath their hooves.
“You could say that.”
Captain Huelra planted his elbows on the rail next to Parno and looked around. “You’re late getting started. Thought you’d changed your minds, eh? Decided to stay aboard after all. The season of the salt caravans is almost a moon away, and if it’s work you need . . .”
“We won’t be staying in Navra,” Parno said, straightening to face the captain. “As soon as Dhulyn Wolfshead finds us a decent packhorse we’ll be going on to Imrion.”
“Imrion? Work there aplenty, if what the gossips here in Navra tell me is true. But you could take ship from here, eh. Not mine, of course,” Huelra added, gesturing with obvious pride at the Catseye. A perfect craft for the inner sea, it was much too small to venture out into the open ocean.
Parno laughed and jerked his thumb at Dhulyn. “The Wolfshead didn’t win that much off your crew playing tiles,” he said. Not that his Partner would agree to an ocean journey in any case, even if they had the money, but Parno saw no reason to tell Huelra that.
The captain nodded again, looking at Parno slantwise, from the corner of his brilliant blue eye.
“Ah. Should have known. They’re saying Imrion’s on the brink of civil war, eh, and if the Mercenary Brotherhood is gathering, they must be right.”
Parno leaned forward again, hands lightly clasped, hoping the shock he’d felt at Huelra’s words hadn’t shown on his face. They’d been out of touch, for certain, but not so out of touch surely that he had to hear what rumor spoke of from outsiders. When he was sure his voice would be normal, he turned his head toward the man.
“The Wolfshead and I came almost without stopping from Destila,” he said, naming the city at the far end of the Midland Sea. “Changing ships only at Cabrea. Does rumor say what it’s about?”
“The Jaldeans are on the one side . . .”
“A bunch of harmless old priests?”
“You’ve been away to west, you say, Lionsmane, but you’re from Imrion yourself, eh?”
“You know better than that, captain. We’re Mercenary Brothers, Dhulyn Wolfshead and I, and that’s where we’re from.”
The captain nodded, tongue flicking out to the corner of his mouth. “Still. If it were anyone else . . . I don’t mind telling you, mercenary, I’m not from Imrion myself.” He shrugged.
“It’s not the old priests you remember, asking for alms for the shrines of the Sleeping God, it’s the New Believers, younger men trying to win the people away from the foreign gods that’ve been gaining a following here in the east.”
“And who on the other side?” It would be strange indeed, Parno thought, for civil war to break out because of a dispute over religion. Minor scuffles certainly, but while the Sleeping God was certainly the primary god here, the whole Letanian peninsula was known for its tolerance of all religious views. Even the Cloud People were open-minded on this point if on no other.
“They say the Tarkin himself,” Huelra answered, “but only a few of the Great Houses have declared themselves one way or the other. And all on account of the Marked,” the man continued, reading the question off Parno’s face. “The New Believers’re saying the Tarkin doesn’t see the danger—”
“Danger? From the Marked? How dangerous can they be? There’s not one in five hundred who are Marked.” Parno was almost smiling in his relief. This time rumor had to be wrong.
Captain Huelra opened his mouth to speak, and snapped it shut again with a frown. Parno turned to see what had drawn the man’s attention. A woman in an elaborately folded green headdress had stopped to say something to
Dhulyn. His Partner listened, nodded, and jerked her head toward the ship, clearly indicating where Captain Huelra stood beside him. Parno glanced back at him when the man sucked at his teeth.
“There’s one now, from Imrion like so many others, and she’ll be asking for passage, eh, and I’ll have to turn her down.”
Parno raised his brows. “She looks like she has money.”
“That woman’s Marked, or her husband is. They’re to wear green headdresses now, and there’s a curfew for them and all.” He looked back at Parno, the muscles of his face gone hard. “And that’s your New Believers as well, eh? It started in Imrion, but it’s spread here, as you can see, maybe in the last moon or so. I don’t know what it is they hold against the Marked—not my business, Truchara’s a good enough god for any sailor—” Huelra spit over the side, giving water to his goddess as he spoke her name.
“When did this start?” Parno said, frowning in his turn. If there could be dress codes and curfews even in a Freeport like Navra, the status of the Marked was changing indeed. “The Wolfshead and I haven’t been in Imrion since they took the field against the Dureans at the battle of Arcosa.”
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